Each month, National Geographic features a photograph from our archives in Flashback. Browse through the galleries of historical images for a view into our past.

Photograph by Willard Price, National Geographic Stock

December 2008

BLANKET STATEMENT

"According to native superstition, the cure for erysipelas [a bacterial skin infection] is to kill a pig, cut it open, and put the sufferer inside," noted Willard Price about this photograph, which he shot for an article he wrote on Korea for the October 1945 Geographic. However, Price explained, "Dr. J.M. Rogers of the Southern Presbyterian hospital, Suncheon, advises a somewhat different treatment."— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by Harrison W. Smith, National Geographic Stock

November 2008

A SAFE DISTANCE

"Indeed, the Sarawak jungle is better protected than our forests," claimed Harrison W. Smith in his February 1919 Geographic article, "Sarawak: The Land of the White Rajahs." But, Smith noted, "it was not the natural history of the country" that prompted his visit to Borneo, "rather the opportunity to become acquainted with primitive and interesting people." Though they may not have been so eager to become acquainted with him. "As with most of the Sarawak tribes, personal cleanliness is the rule," he wrote. "The Dayaks have been known to comment on a white traveler to the effect that, although he seemed to be otherwise all right, he did not bathe as frequently as they considered necessary."— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by Underwood and Underwood/NG Image Collection

October 2008

DRIVING FAITH

"New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland, with a combined population smaller than Poland...have more automobiles in service than the whole world outside of the United States," wrote William Joseph Showalter in his October 1923 National Geographic article, "The Automobile Industry." Pictured in that issue was one of those New York cars in service—to a higher power. The Reverend Branford Clarke's Brooklyn-based "traveling chapel" was equipped with stained-glass windows, an organ for his wife to play, and a fold-down steeple to help the whole thing fit in his garage.
— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph courtesy USDA

September 2008

LOSING GROUND

A man measures the former ground level arm-high in rural Roosevelt County, New Mexico, in 1957. Only the deep roots of native bluestem grass held this hill of sandy soil together; winds had carved the rest away. Back then farmers here used clean tillage, the practice of clearing the soil surface of plant debris, says Patrick Kircher, a Roosevelt County agricultural extension agent. "They also broke down the ground to make a very fine seedbed. In country that's not very windy, that works well. But not here," he says. "Now we know to leave crop residue on the surface to help hold things in place."— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Slogans honoring writer Maksim Gorky draped balconies at Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre in 1928. The photo appeared in the May 1930 Geographic article "Some Impressions of 150,000 Miles of Travel," by William Howard Taft. The former President—a longtime National Geographic Society board member—mentions seeing a "beautiful children's ballet" during a visit to the Bolshoi years before the Russian Revolution. But unrest was already in the air. During the same trip, he says of a military companion, "We never entered an anteroom where … the General, in humorous reference to the possibility of being blown up, did not suggest an examination of the ceiling to see whether it was of such material as to make our passage through it a comfortable one."— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Indigenous Bolivian cholitas check out the latest merchandise in a La Paz appliance store. This picture was acquired for—but not published in—the March 1943 National Geographic story "Bolivia, Tin Roof of the Andes." It's possible these women weren't just window-shopping. "Urban cholitas have little to do with popular beliefs of a timeless, unchanging indigenous culture," explains American University anthropology professor Lesley Gill. Today, "they are urban born and frequently well-to-do. They make their money primarily from commerce, and their style of dress expresses a dynamic, expensive, and completely modern sense of Aymara femininity. Many hats come from Italy, for example," Gill notes, "and nowadays the cloth for their skirts comes from Korea."— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by Barbara Maddrell, National Geographic Image Collection

June 2008

CUTTING IT CLOSE

Mowing among the megaliths at Stonehenge must have been a mighty task. England's Salisbury Plain—home to the famous standing stones as well as hundreds of other prehistoric sites—is one of the largest expanses of rare chalk grassland left in Europe. The man in this 1950s photograph (never previously published in the Geographic) was unavailable for comment on his labors. His name did not accompany the image, and his origins, much like Stonehenge's, remain a mystery.— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by Heinrich Harrer

May 2008

LEAVING LHASA

His palanquin carried on the shoulders of the faithful (left), the 15-year-old Dalai Lama fled Tibet's capital as the Chinese army advanced in 1950. "Pious Tibetans hurried from far-off settlements to see him, for being in his presence gave incomparable blessing," wrote Heinrich Harrer, who served as the young leader's tutor and reported on his experience in the July 1955 Geographic. "They lined the entire trail from Lhasa to Chumbi Valley, 200 miles southwest, with parallel rows of pebbles to protect their harried King from evil spirits." The Dalai Lama was able to return to Lhasa the next year. He escaped again, to exile in India, after a failed Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule in 1959—and has never been back.— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by Kadel and Herbert, National Geographic Image Collection

April 2008

SCALE TO FIT

Fish scales stood in for sequins on a dress that was "the latest to be worn by women," according to notes accompanying this photo. The image arrived at the Geographic in June 1921 but was not published. It may have been acquired for the magazine's January 1922 story "Certain Citizens of the Warm Sea," in which author Louis L. Mowbray noted: "The writer has seen an evening gown made wholly of bonefish scales which was indeed a thing of beauty. The scales were bored and laid on a fabric base like shingles on a roof. The resultant effect was like that of the natural body of the fish."— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by Kurt Severin, National Geographic Image Collection

March 2008

SITTING KITTY

A patient little cat endures lessons in baboonery. According to notes accompanying the photograph—which arrived at the Geographic in 1956 but was never published by the magazine—"Baboon mother tries to make Fluffy sit up like a good monkey baby. But the kitten always falls back on her four legs. It seems like such a hopeless case." The baboon, named Helen, was an attraction at Ross Allen's Reptile Institute, a roadside zoo funded in 1929 in Silver Springs, Florida. She may have been a holdover from the days when Tarzan movies were filmed in the region and Allen provided animal actors for visiting Hollywood productions.— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by Eliza R. Scidmore

February 2008

GOING HOME

Rough-hewn boards sketch the path across a graveled river for a man wending homeward his weary way after a strenuous day in the rice fields. The photo by Eliza Scidmore—writer, photographer, geographer, and the first female board member of the National Geographic Society—ran in the July 1914 Geographic. Scidmore loved Japan and made the first of many visits to the country in 1885. The last occurred in 1929, when her ashes were interred in a Yokohama cemetery.— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by Osaka Mainichi Shimbun

January 2008

THE HEAT OF THE MOMENT

An exploring party speeds away from Sakurajima on the third day of that Japanese volcanos January 1914 eruption. This photo, along with one of the same group gazing into a lava flow with handkerchiefs over the faces to protect throats from hydrochloric acid fumes, appeared in the April 1924 National Geographic. This eruption—the largest ever in Japan—came as no surprise. The ground around the volcano had rumbled for days; in the nearby city of Kagoshima, 417 earthquakes were recorded in the 30 hours before the mountain blew its top. Sakurajimas first recorded eruption occurred in A.D. 708. It still belches dangerous gases and rains ash on a regular basis, and is one of the most active volcanoes on Earth.— Margaret G. Zackowitz